


Unfinished

by Teland



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-12-28
Updated: 1998-12-28
Packaged: 2020-12-14 04:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teland/pseuds/Teland
Summary: Is it still inertia if you're fully aware of it?





	Unfinished

**Author's Note:**

> kormantic asked; Dawn Sharon and Viridian beta-read. <3

Inertia. 

Is it still inertia if you're fully aware of it?

Bodies at motion, bodies at rest... I remember Mr. Levin's   
Physics class in the tenth grade. My hair was longer then,   
browner. I still didn't have breasts, and so I was this   
pear-shaped thing. I felt unfinished, and I felt incredibly   
worthless. Not because of my looks, but because I was   
spending all that time obsessing over them.

There were only three girls in that class, and it was my   
job to make sure no one noticed that I was one of them. Had   
to be better, faster, smarter. A shining example. The sort   
of student Mr. Levin would reminisce about between classes,   
after I had graduated. I was the oblivious sort when it   
came to the idea of romance... It took me until late April   
before I figured out I'd had a crush on the man.

His dark hair was just a little too long; he was robust and   
always in motion. He was the sort of man that made you   
think 'avuncular,' and then shudder. No one wants their   
uncle to look like that, have quite that much infectious   
sparkle in their eyes. No one wants to have quite that much   
sympathy for Gertrude, or for that legion of nameless girls   
too foolish to see their fundamental victimization and thus   
stop... surrendering.

I'm drifting, and I think this is a part of that so-called   
inertia. I'm aware that it's Saturday afternoon. I'm aware   
that I am alone in this apartment on this Saturday   
afternoon. My eggnog is uncomfortably warm. It's 1999, and   
I am alone.

I want to call Mulder over, make up any excuse at all.   
There are reasons. My mother was superstitious about any   
number of things, one of which was the "fact" that if a   
woman was the first person to walk into your home after New   
Year's the household would be afflicted with bad luck for   
the year. Technically, I'm trapped here. 

I could leave, but until I found a willing male I'd be   
exiled from my home. Doomed to roam, perhaps visiting ill   
fortune on the homes of others. The idea makes me smile a   
little. There is a romance to the myth of the dark,   
wandering... Queen?

Yes, queen feels right. A fairy tale for me, perhaps   
something Melissa would have appreciated. The older woman,   
neither the fresh-faced Maiden nor the wise Crone. And the   
Matron... the Matron does not love her queen, for the queen   
is mother to none. Lover to none. And so she is exiled from   
society, and gradually becomes nothing more substantial   
than the breadth of her own pain.

And when the years have stripped her of all traces of   
beauty, not even the Crone will take her as her own, for   
she'll have lost all wisdom in the face of her consuming   
misery. 

It occurs to me that it was a spectacularly bad idea to   
dump that creme de cacao in this egg nog. Egg nog. Now   
*there's* a silly drink. I heard some comedian describe the   
desire for the stuff perfectly once: "For those times when   
you want to get a *little* drunk, and also eat pancakes." 

I miss my hips sometimes, I do. I haven't been able to gain   
weight since the cancer, not in any significant way. Don't   
get me wrong, I love the new suits I can wear now, but I   
haven't been 15 for a very long while. I no longer mind the   
idea of looking unfinished, and yet I look at myself in the   
mirror and see... Scully.

Scully. Not plosive, but still a harsh, ungiving name. Dana   
is longer, softer in sound and expression. Vague around the   
edges. Scully... Scully is set and defined as any high   
school lab result. There can be no other answer to the   
hoary old hypothesis short of massive, near   
incomprehensible error. And so, short of some surprising   
end to this day, I am Scully.

And why should I wait for the surprise? Since when do I   
need something to react to in order... in order to *live*? 

No more egg nog, then.

But the thought remains... I could blame Mulder for this,   
all of this. I could find a way. Don't we all have people   
in our lives that, for all we try, we can't surprise?   
Someone we just sit back and watch, perhaps occasionally   
doing our best to nudge them into normality. 

I can hear myself trying to justify my relationship with   
Mulder, trying to find some common ground with a world that   
I feel myself floating away from more and more each day...   
But I don't know what to do about it. How to make my   
examples more global. At some point, the lease on my   
gravity ran out and I began to drift away. 

I was careless. Lazy. We are only human so long as we work   
to retain those contacts we've been blessed with... and I   
stopped working a long time ago. There were the X-Files to   
consider, and how to keep my career while still working to   
find answers, pieces of truth. Not *the* truth, though.   
That's Mulder's Grail. 

And how the man can be so... so *disrespectful* of my   
religion when he lives his life like a martyr waiting to   
happen is, and perhaps will always be, beyond me. Perhaps   
this is something new to blame Mulder for: consistently   
proving to be too much of a mystery to simply leave behind. 

But that isn't really fair. I don't think he tries to be   
incomprehensible to me, and he has stated his feelings   
about me in a million different ways, perhaps attempting a   
sort of multi-lingual announcement. Touch me here, and   
press. Gaze at me from a hospital bed... Mulder packs his   
own gravitational pull, and I think I've grown to love my   
drift, my solitude, too much to surrender to any orbit,   
even Mulder's. Hold my face and come so so close...

I had forgotten what it was like to have one's senses   
register nothing but the inescapable presence of another,   
when everything becomes meaningless in the prospect of   
*contact*. It doesn't make sense; every nerve ending is   
sensitized to the point where the sweetest touch *aches*.   
And yet there is nothing more rational in the lover's mind   
than to seek that ache with ever fiber of her being. 

I want to, I want to. 

I'm here, right here, and I want him to bless my home with   
luck, and I want him to take me out of this chair and press   
his messages all over my finished body. I feel as though   
I've been sitting in this chair since the wee hours of   
Christmas morning. I came home and sat here, and convinced   
myself that I would simply go to him with that book of   
Hughes poems.

And make him read a few to me. My father wasn't around much   
for bedtime stories, and my mother thought it best that we   
read to ourselves. Or perhaps she was just tired. In any   
case, storytelling never grew stale for me. Never lost its   
magic. And if he had tried to kiss me after the tale of   
those doomed lovers, I would have let him. 

The dream falls apart so damned *quickly*, though, because   
if it had happened that way we never would've gone into   
that damned house. I never would've given him those poems,   
either, because after I finished hating myself for leaving   
my safe, dry, empty place I would've remembered that we   
weren't supposed to exchange gifts at all. 

But perhaps he'd be here right now... 

I want to be his Scully, because he says he loves that   
woman, and perhaps if I let myself be that lover I'll learn   
what it is about Scully's set-ness that is lovable. But if   
I am finished, if I can't change, how will that ever   
happen?

It's cold in here.

It's colder outside.

I don't want to be alone.

I can't change. 

Can I? Would the escape from my conscious inertia drag me   
back to Earth? 

Do I want to go?

I'm tired of this, and there isn't even any decent Scotch   
in the house to make this sort of thing... well, if not   
admirable, then at least classic. I want to roam, but I   
don't want to do it alone. I want my fortunes to be vivid,   
even if they are dark. I want to be held against that wall   
and fucked unconscious.

I can tell myself that it doesn't have to be Mulder. It   
might even be true.

I can tell myself this consciousness is new, and proof that   
I'm changing, whether I want to or not. Whether I really   
can. I want to go over to his apartment, where he is   
undoubtedly alone, and I can ask him to put on his glasses.   
He'd laugh, but comply. Perhaps assuming that I want him to   
go over reports. I would have brought my briefcase, after   
all.

And then I would... drink him in. He's wearing jeans that   
are loose but not disreputable. A casually conservative   
flannel shirt, solid in color. Perhaps maroon, or a deep   
green. The sleeves are rolled up, and the collar is open. I   
can't see his feet, but that's all right because they're   
under the coffee table. He is sprawled on the couch; I am   
across from him in the chair.

"Scully?" 

He would be a little nervous at this point, I think.   
Perhaps a mere clutch of seconds away from a silly joke, or   
double entendre. I get angry at him for believing that sort   
of thing would be enough to make me distance myself from   
him, and so I... distance myself from him. The realization   
makes me laugh, and he asks:

"What's so funny?"

Darkly curious, perhaps fearing the spectre of my disdain.   
I can be so powerful in my fantasies, I can...

But all I'll say is this:

"I finally understand why I like you in glasses so much,   
Mulder."

"Something about a man in blue jeans and wire rims, I bet.   
Fox Mulder, CPA of the Old West. Admit it, you want me."

I'll just look at him then, and smile. I feel both irked   
and comforted that Mulder is so true to form. I shake my   
head then, and say:

"No, that's not quite it. Actually, those glasses make you   
look like the ideal, the Omega, of the Debauched College   
Professor. You look like you could spend an hour and a half   
deconstructing my life and my essay with casual cruelty,   
and then, when you were done, you'd say, 'Dana, get down on   
your knees and suck my cock.' You look like you'd honestly   
expect me to do it."

His gaze has gained weight during my little speech, and I   
am not at all uncomfortable in the silence before it is   
broken with his:

"Would you?"

Low, flat as ever but... breathier. 

And I'd tell him he was no professor, and then walk out. 

No. 

"Would you?"

I'd lick my lips once and walk over to kneel between his   
thighs. 

"Scully?"

And his voice would be uncomfortable. Fearful. Scullies   
don't kneel. And I'd bow my head for a moment before   
standing, and walking out.

No. 

"Would you?"

"Yes."

And then... and then I don't know. Perhaps there would be   
another silence, and I'd make myself say something.   
Anything. 

"I want you to kiss me, Mulder. I want to know what happens   
if you do."

I like this one. It's unfinished, and there are no lines or   
trails I know that it could follow. I feel it crowd in my   
head, an explosion of color, loud and undeniable. The   
terrifying bloom of a bouquet viewed through time-lapse   
photography. So much, so fast, so *loud*. 

I feel larger with the fantasy, the knowledge of it, the   
heft and curve of *possibility*. 

But it's very loud. 

I may need help to silence it.

Or perhaps just someone who can teach me to live with it.

~~~~  
End.  
~~~~


End file.
